Open Road

Monday Jun 15th 2009

Simon Heffer is wrong about social media and Iran shows why

I was moderately outraged earlier on to read this reliably off the mark piece by Simon Heffer. It’s almost endearing that the Hef singles out Facebook for his ire - come on, man, you are years behind even the dead tree media here. His conclusion is that social media is “artificial, illusory and alarmingly shallow”.

It’s moronic stuff and I recommend you don’t read it. I’m not going to outline an argument in favour of social media here, on a blog. Instead I’m simply going to give an example of how it’s being used in a way that is anything but alarmingly shallow.

Over in Iran there’s been an election. This has been inadequately covered by the mainstream media, especially the opposition to Ahmadinejad. In the past we might not have found this out but social media has allowed the Iranian people to communicate, unmediated, with the outside world.

Twitter is easily the best way to follow, real time, what’s happening. If you haven’t, go to: twitter.com/#IranElection. Here are two sample tweets to give you a flavour:

@RahaMahara: #iranelection VOTED BUT DEVASTATED - IT’s not the end, it’s the beginning of the end. This is not just corruption, it’s corruption revealed.

@persiankiwi cancelation of march today is a RUMOUR from gov. Khatami ad Moussavi will attend. today we march. #Iranelection #tehran #iran

Mousavi, the leading opponent, told the world he was under house arrest via Twitter.

Here’s a Reddit page (that’s another social media tool Heffer would doubtless condemn) listing hundreds of Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles, Flickr slideshows and Youtube videos from inside Iran - http://tinyurl.com/m5l7p2

As a result of the information streaming out of Iran, social media users (or, as I like to call them, people) have been quite cross with the mainstream media’s coverage of Iran, especially CNN and its slowness in reporting the huge opposition to Ahmadinejad. This has itself become a news story - http://tinyurl.com/m3xwaf. Or just go straight to the horse’s mouth and have a look on twitter.com/#cnnfail. Apparently CNN has increased its coverage as a result. I can’t confirm this as I’ve been too busy on Twitter, Youtube and Flickr to bother with CNN.

All of this, to put it mildly, is amazing; inspiring actually. None of it is artificial, illusory or alarmingly shallow. And if Simon Heffer and all the rest of the nay-sayers can’t see that , they are fools.